Jimmy Carter Was the Worst President of My Lifetime. Until He Wasn’t.

The thing that most jumped out at me when I learned of former President Jimmy Carter’s death Sunday night was the thought that back in his day, the media didn’t keep things from you. Not like they do today.

Carter is the first president that I am old enough to remember. My earliest political memory is watching his debate with Gerald Ford. I don’t remember what they said because I was six years old at the time. But my dad was rooting for Carter, so I did too.

And then he won and — wow! — what a disaster. Those details I do remember. As I say, back then, they didn’t hide it from us. Already in 1977, the year Carter was inaugurated, my first-grade classmates and other elementary schoolkids were perusing issues of The Weekly Reader explaining inflation.

By contrast, just this past week The Epoch Times ran a front-page article headlined “Trump to Inherit Years of Steep Inflation” with the subhead “Americans are struggling with high debt, high interest rates, and wages that haven’t kept up with inflation.”

I say “by contrast” because it was The Epoch Times. Unless you get your news from some alternative source today, you won’t be exposed to any unvarnished reporting that makes a Democratic president look bad. But back then, you would’ve.

When Journalism Was Still a Thing

Even back in Carter’s era, the media leaned left, but they still did real journalism. If a Democratic president was doing a lousy job for the country, you wouldn’t have to rely on your own common sense to know it. The press would actually report on it.

When Carter was president, his failings and those of his administration were all out there in the open. Iran took Americans hostage when I was nine years old and held them for over a year. “Americans Held Hostage” was the daily headline in print and television news. (Seriously. They would count the days. “Americans Held Hostage: Day 100,” that sort of thing.) The yellow ribbons tied around trees to remind us not to forget the hostages were everywhere. My fourth-grade classmates and I were talking about it. Our parents were talking about it. Everyone was.

Today, more than a year after their capture, do we even know the names of the American hostages still being held by Hamas? Where are the yellow ribbons? Where is the “Americans Held Hostage” daily reporting?

How is it that Joe Biden’s botched U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan got so little coverage? It’s only the second time in history that the U.S. lost a war. But, except among those for whom the issue is of particular interest, our humiliation in Afghanistan barely pierced the public consciousness.

The Paradigmatic Election

It was not so during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. America was weak under his administration and the press did not hide it. Inflation, the energy crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, the rabbit attack, the Desert One disaster, stagflation, Carter’s responsibility for the malaise he identified — the press put it all out there, even if it did not reflect well on an incumbent Democratic administration.

Contrast all that with media coverage of the Biden administration. The Wall Street Journal only recently published some deep-dive reporting on what everyone has known all along: Biden was never “sharp as a tack.” All through his presidency, his inner circle covered for his mental decline. But the press was part of the cover-up. Their hatred of Trump kept them from exposing it. And to this day, we still don’t know who was really running the country during the Biden administration.

For a conservative my age, 1980 is the iconic, paradigmatic presidential election. In our minds, Jimmy Carter will always be the personification of the Democratic Party’s failures. Ronald Reagan will always be the personification of the Republican Party’s role in restoring American greatness after the Democrats undermined the country’s strength. I think of The New Yorker’s image of Hoover and FDR, but with the parties reversed. Republicans are the cheery “morning in America” crowd. Democrats are the dour ones, always apologizing for America’s faults, real or perceived.

The Long-Awaited Sequel to 1980

I was 14 years old when 49 out of 50 states reelected Reagan in 1984. The country was doing so much in better in just four years. The idea of replacing Reagan with Jimmy Carter’s vice-president was preposterous. No one wanted to go back to that.

The gap between Carter and Reagan, in fact, was burned so deeply in our minds that it skewed the Republican Party’s ability to accurately assess certain election years. To the GOP, every Democrat President was Jimmy Carter. Every election would be 1980 again. But both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were reelected.

Not until Joe Biden’s presidency and Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign did we get a year that really was like 1980. In fact, some believe that 2024 will be to Generation Z what 1980 was to Generation X: that an entire generation will go through life remembering the Democrats as the party of failure and the Republicans as the party that can Make America Great Again.

Perhaps. But Trump’s victory, though decisive, was not a 1980s-style landslide. Again, I note the difference between the media environment of 1980 and that of now. Perhaps the alternative media, the podcasters who helped reelect Trump, will make the difference. But I am not sure anything compares to having a mainstream media that, even if left-leaning, would call it like they saw it. Even the pop culture of the 1970s. On one network, the SNL skits at Carter’s expense could be brutal. On another network, an All in the Family episode had Archie Bunker skewering Carter’s call to lower the heat in your home and wear a sweater. There is no pushback like that of any kind against Democrats in today’s mainstream media and pop culture. They are just mouthpieces for the regime now.

Biden Was Worse

And their obsequiousness is worse, more damaging, than it would have been in the 1970s because — God help me, but it has to be said — Jimmy Carter was not the worst president of my lifetime.

Carter secured a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. Once Russia invaded Afghanistan, he stopped ignoring Cold War realities and started the arms buildup that Reagan continued. In fact, Carter’s deregulation policies and appointing Paul Volker as the head of the Fed also helped put the country on the successful course that we rightly associate with Reagan. Even Carter’s advocacy of human rights helped give Reagan another weapon with which to defeat the USSR. And I don’t dispute all the talk about Carter’s personal decency and his stellar post-presidential career.

I’ve lived through ten presidents, most of whom I did not like. But I have always thought to myself, However much I didn’t like President So-and-So, however much I think he left the country weaker, at least he didn’t blow the thing up. At least it’s still possible to turn the situation around. That was true of Carter. He had the good fortune to live long enough to be replaced in my mind by a better candidate for worst president.

Today, I look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in which U.S. policy seems determined to bring us to a nuclear precipice. I look at the Israel-Gaza war. I look at the ten million people who came over our border illegally and the subsequent migrant crime. I look at the Chinese surveillance balloon that was allowed to sail over our military sites and the near-daily reports of computer hacks by the Chinese of our sensitive data. I look at scores of similar things and I think, Wow. Joe Biden really did blow the thing up.

Hopefully, Trump can still fix it. In the meantime, Carter is no longer the worst president of my lifetime. Rest in peace, President Carter.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action. He lives in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on The Stream are solely his own.